The official help me get a degree thread

[Supergrunch]

So who wants to do my homework for me? Do a word-association experiment to see how your subjects' mental lexicons are organised.

 

Actually I might just do it myself - it seems quite fun.

I'd do that, although I'm a theoretical linguist rather than a psycholinguist. The lexicon is pretty much a mystery, however.

Can someone help me with:

 

Use the binomial theorem to show that

 

(1 + 2/(n^1/2))^n >= n for n >= 1 (>= is "greater than or equal to")

Hmm, I've forgotten a lot of my binomial type stuff so won't be much help. Odwin may well be decent at that, what with being a statistician and all.

[Mr_Odwin]

Hmm, I've forgotten a lot of my binomial type stuff so won't be much help. Odwin may well be decent at that, what with being a statistician and all.

 

I've had a stab at it, and can't do it. I'm hoping chair will give us the solution so it will end my misery.

It's annoying that I can't do first year maths. You lose it.

[Supergrunch]

I've had a stab at it, and can't do it. I'm hoping chair will give us the solution so it will end my misery.

It's annoying that I can't do first year maths. You lose it.

I have a friend who got a first in maths at Cambridge, and went on to do the optional 4th year, but then when into programming, and now says he barely remembers how to do A-level further maths like eigenvectors, let alone degree level stuff. For some reason maths is so much easier to forget than anything else...

[chairdriver]

I managed it:

 

EDIT: When I put (n-2!) I meant (n-2)!

Edited November 13, 2009 by chairdriver

[Mr_Odwin]

I love it. You only need the first and third terms of the expansion. Everything else is just chaff.

Edited November 13, 2009 by Mr_Odwin

[Raining_again]

Wow, a man with tidy handwriting! *is amazed*

 

[Dannyboy-the-Dane]

Wow, a man with tidy handwriting! *is amazed*

 

Oi! We're not all terrible at orderly stuff!

[chairdriver]

Wow, a man with tidy handwriting! *is amazed*

 

 

That's quite messy for my standards as well!

[Molly]

Chair, would it be alright if I started calling you Will Hunting?

 

It's better than Carol Smillie anyway

[chairdriver]

There are n people present in a room.

(a) What is the probability that at least two of them celebrate their birthday on the

same day? How large need n be for this probability to be more than 1/2 ? (Ignore leap years.)

 

(b) What is the probability that at least one of them celebrates their birthday on the

same day as you? How large need n be for this probability to be more than 1/2 ?

 

I'm really bad at probability...

[Mr_Odwin]

It's an old well known problem. Just google "birthday problem" and you'll see loads of stuff.

23 if I remember rightly for the second part of (a) - it's a low number surprise!.

[Supergrunch]

It's an old well known problem. Just google "birthday problem" and you'll see loads of stuff.

23 if I remember rightly for the second part of (a) - it's a low number surprise!.

Yep, I've also come across this before, and the answer to (a) is indeed 23. I guess you can adapt the method used to reach this to answer part (b).

Oi! We're not all terrible at orderly stuff!

I really am, or at least when it comes to handwriting. Even I can barely read my notes, I should post a sample some time.

Edited November 18, 2009 by Supergrunch

[Dannyboy-the-Dane]

Yep, I've also come across this before, and the answer to (a) is indeed 23. I guess you can adapt the method used to reach this to answer part (b).

 

I really am, or at least when it comes to handwriting. Even I can barely read my notes, I should post a sample some time.

I've been pretty bad at it, too. Let's just say there is an opposite correlation between the speed with which I write and the readability of what I write. :p

[Mr_Odwin]

My handwriting is in my sig and avatar. Soak it in peeps, soak it in.

[Twozzok]

help.

 

this is my text file

@band name@cd name@[email protected]@1234@
@copy cat@cd sss@[email protected]@5678@
@bandd ddd@cddd ddd@[email protected]@1234@

 

this is my output:

 

 

and this is my code:

 

http://www.twozzok.com/code.txt

 

 

My problem, it's not displaying the last entry in the text, but just gives me an error. Whyy ? !_!

 

EDIT: If I add another entry, it still only displays the first two.

 

EDIT^2: And now it suddenly works without changing anything O_o

 

it seems the last record of the one i pasted in here fucks it all up. If I delete it I can add whatever, but re-adding that one makes it bugger up.

 

EDIT^3: It seems for band name and cd name, if the last three chars are the same it errors.

Edited November 22, 2009 by Twozzok

[jayseven]

Ok, I need to do a psycholinguistic 'experiment'. Here's the required speel:

 

I'd appreciate your participation in my test; a simple word-association task. I will present to you a list of twelve words, and you are to respond to each with the first four words you think of. Please do not worry about how 'good' or 'appropriate' your choices are, just try to say the first four that you think of.

 

My intention is to analyse how words are connected within our minds, to see whether one proposed 'model' is more accurate than another.

 

If you could PM me with your response rather than posting them here, I'd be very grateful. Your results and my analysis should be confidential, and you are free to ask me to remove your results from my assignment at anytime.

 

I'm also conducting this experiment in the real world, but I'd like to have two solid groups to compare and contrast.

 

So here are the words, in spoiler tags so you can think about one word at a time;

 

Butterfly

 

Walking

 

Advertisement

 

Happy

 

Legible

 

Salt

 

Hungry

 

Red

 

Dog

 

Dismal

 

Convenience

 

Summer

 

 

Thanks for any help, guys.

[Dannyboy-the-Dane]

I'll participate.

[chairdriver]

Let A = {person has disease} and B = {test is positive}

 

Does the sentence "A laboratory test is 95% effective in detecting a certain disease when it is in fact present" imply P(A ∪ B) = 0.95 or P(B ∣ A) = 0.95?

 

It's integral to working out the rest of the problem!

[Paj!]

@ Jayseven

 

I'm doing it now, but I'm not sure how to actually do it. With the first one, I got an image in my head, as I repeated the word out loud. Do I describe elements of the image? Or wait until I analyse what words really make up what I think about said word?

 

EDIT: For example;

the second one, I got 1 that was a word that popped into my head, "Rain", and 3 that really just described the "stock" image of the action in my head; "Street" "man" "grey". I know you said that anything goes, but I don't think it's actually doing it right. It's just descriptive.

 

Edited November 25, 2009 by Paj!

[jayseven]

Paj; that's part of the crit regarding the test. Often people would take the stimuli then 'chain' the associations off of that. I suppose the test asks for the four strongest associations, so if you think "rain" then "man in rain", and the latter is stronger than your thought for "monkeys" then that's ok... But altogether the test is heavily flawed, and really the only way that sort of event is ironed out is by averages. If I get 100 people to take part then your little meander would become insignificant to the results as a whole.

 

Er. yeah. I dunno. It's rather silly.

[Mr_Odwin]

Let A = {person has disease} and B = {test is positive}

 

Does the sentence "A laboratory test is 95% effective in detecting a certain disease when it is in fact present" imply P(A ∪ B) = 0.95 or P(B ∣ A) = 0.95?

 

It's integral to working out the rest of the problem!

 

P(B | A) = 0.95

[Paj!]

Hmm...I might just not take part at all. Rain was the only word that came to me, seperate of the stock image in my head, due to walking, walking, walking, in the rain, a lyrics from Grace Jones (someone else originally). The rest is me sturggling to think about what is most important from the image in my head. I don't think that's proper, and it's too time consuming.

 

For no.3, I got an image from Blade Runner/Batman, kinda a roof-top at night with the big neon adverts from those kinda fantasy cityscapes. No words again though.

[chairdriver]

Three biased coins C(1), C(2) , C(3) lie on a table. Their respective probabilities of falling heads when tossed are 1/3, 2/3 and 1. A coin is picked at random, tossed, and observed to fall heads. Calculate the probability that it is C(k) for each k = 1, 2, 3.

 

Given that a coin has been tossed once and observed to fall heads, calculate the prob-

ability that a second throw of the same coin will also produce heads.

 

I'm not sure what to set as my conditional probability thingys for the first bit?

 

A = {toss gives heads} , B(k) = {coin C(k) was chosen}

 

?

[jayseven]

Paj; I wrote up, printed and handed in teh essay this morning :P No worries But it's always fun to put your own associations under the microscope. Makes you kinda introspective and quizzical.

[Paj!]

Hmm. Well I recently found out (and this showed) that I think in images, and have a huge "stock" of images in my head? We've done "mood boards" a few times at college, but mine always end up as more descriptive collages, and the tutors said I have a really good eye for collage (bit like being told you're good at making tea, but it pleased me), as I kinda think of images I've seen throught my life/experiences, rather than just randomly flicking through magazines and sticking shite in. [/off topic]

 

EDIT: Obviously we all "think in images", that sounds rubbish. But I think it's why I want to do something like film or graphic design.